Dear Apple,

We believe that people who create great software should be able to make a living doing it.
So we created The Developers Union to advocate for sustainability in the App Store.

Today, we are asking Apple to publicly commit — by the tenth anniversary of the App Store this July — to allowing free trials for all apps in the App Stores before July 2019.
After that, we'll start advocating for a more reasonable revenue cut and other community-driven, developer-friendly changes.

667 apps support this cause

569 people support this cause

F.A.Q

No, this is a non-union union created to bring developers and supporters together for better App Stores for all by focusing on issues that best serve those who create and use apps.

Why free trials?

Free trials are a great place to start and gather the momentum needed to create significant change.
Trials allow developers to show users their creation and establish value.
Before iOS, Mac developers relied heavily on free trials, and they were able to make a living while making great software.

What other changes will The Developers Union advocate for?

We really want this to be community-driven, so this is about your ideas. One thing on top of developers' minds is the revenue split between Apple and developers. That could be next.

Brought to you by...

Brent Simmons

Brent has been writing apps for Apple computers for almost 40 years, since his first Apple II Plus in 1980.
His professional apprenticeship was at UserLand Software where he worked on Frontier and on Manila, an early blog platform.
Later he created apps such as NetNewsWire, TapLynx, Glassboard, MarsEdit, and Vesper.
Brent lives in Seattle with his wife Sheila.
He’s been blogging since 1999 at inessential.com.

Jake is an independent artist living in Boise, Idaho with his wife and two daughters.
Filling most of his time as a filmmaker and commercial director,
Jake claims he is no longer bitter about the Mac Pro and looks forward to returning to editing
on the Mac in 2019. His debut feature documentary,
App: The Human Story, chronicled the meteoric explosion of the “app”
as a cultural phenomenon, along with the corresponding struggle of many developers
dealing with the limitations of the App Store model.

Loren is a product designer from Boise, Idaho.
He has designed software for healthcare, e-commerce, real estate, time tracking, and a Y Combinator startup.
In his free time he works on side projects like this and Built in Boise, a website profiling local entrepreneurs.
He dislikes summarizing himself in paragraph long bios.

Roger is a software developer who mostly writes for the web and dabbles in iOS development.
He got his first Mac in 2007: a white polycarbonate MacBook. Since then, he’s closely followed the Apple indie developer scene,
which inspired him to become a programmer. He enjoys obsessively following theme park news and reconfiguring his terminal dot files for the 37th time this year.
He lives in Boise with his wife Sidney and his two dogs Annabelle and Oliver, and occasionally blogs at The Relativity Transit.